Re: New Guides for SA/Cisco Areas (Info from Ted Hodgins Blog)

Haven't seen Russ in awhile. Anyway I wonder when the heck we're going to actually see the new update to fix the glitch we are seeing with cablecards showing the channel is not authorized on both cablecard equipped devices as well as the Cisco RNG200N models. This has been an issue for quite a long time.

Haven't seen Russ in awhile. Anyway I wonder when the heck we're going to actually see the new update to fix the glitch we are seeing with cablecards showing the channel is not authorized on both cablecard equipped devices as well as the Cisco RNG200N models. This has been an issue for quite a long time.

You won't see Russ until after the data recovery is finished, see»Re: are we back?

The fix for the channel is not authorized message should be in the next release S26 scheduled for this Summer, see my previous post. It wouldn't surprise me if that release gets delayed again.

The previous patch that fixed (the truncated recordings, some of the not authorized issues and Pass Through except when using an HDMI cable) started being deployed at the end of October 2011 and completed being deployed around March 2012.

said by Ted Hodgins :We have also worked with Cisco to make necessary firmware changes in the upcoming guide release. These changes have been shown to eliminate the unintended Not Authorized occurrences that have been observed.

The firmware update included in this upcoming release also has the HDMI cables working very well with the HD Pass-Through feature.

The next guide release S26 and firmware patch referrenced by Ted Hodgins is scheduled for mid 2012 (Summer). The guide release S26 has been scheduled for mid 2012 for about 9 months. I don't know how long the firmware patch has been scheduled for.

The patch I'm referring to is the one to temporarily alleviate the Cisco/SA RNG200N and devices with Cisco/SA cablecards installed that randomly incorrectly reports channels as not authorized after a number of channel changes in a short period of time. There is suppose to be a firmware update Cisco was working on to fix this issue permanently.

The patch I'm referring to is the one to temporarily alleviate the Cisco/SA RNG200N and devices with Cisco/SA cablecards installed that randomly incorrectly reports channels as not authorized after a number of channel changes in a short period of time. There is suppose to be a firmware update Cisco was working on to fix this issue permanently.

I think you misunderstood Ted Hodgins comments to you, but Ted was overly optomistic about the software patch significantly alleviating the current Not Authorized issue. The software patch has been deployed but the Firmware changes have not. The Firmware changes were scheduled for mid 2012 and still are scheduled for mid 2012. The Firmware changes will be made when S26 is deployed this Summer. The following quote is from Ted Hodgins to you from November 3, 2011.

said by Ted Hodgins :Hello Mr. Wolf and thanks for your comnents and question. I am sorry to hear about the issue you are having with your Moxi and cablecard.

The software patch that we have started to roll out to the SA-Cisco cable boxes significantly alleviates the current Not Authorized issue on our cable boxes.

We did not make any changes to the firmware in this patch. Firmware changes to completely resolve this issue are included in an upcoming guide software release scheduled for mid-2012.

I will be able to update specific information as each area gets confirmed. All of our SA-Cisco customers will be getting this software patch. I don't have a confirmed timeframe for your location in New Jersey just yet.

The plan is to get the software patch to the majority of our Cisco-SA customers this year.

The software patch is now out to about 22% of our SA-Cisco customers including customers in TX, MS, LA and customers with RNG 150 and 150n boxes in MN.

Exactly, yet it's already May and there has been no status update and confirmation, and users with TiVo and Moxi and THPC's that use Cisco/SA cablecards are still affected. Also still don't know if the software patch mentioned in the post was even rolled out to my area.

Exactly, yet it's already May and there has been no status update and confirmation, and users with TiVo and Moxi and THPC's that use Cisco/SA cablecards are still affected. Also still don't know if the software patch mentioned in the post was even rolled out to my area.

The software patch has been rolled out to all SA/Cisco areas as far as I can tell. Ted explained how to tell if you have it by looking at the version numbers. It fixed the truncated recordings issue, allowed Pass Through except for using an HDMI cable and was supposed to help alleviate some of the Unauthorized channel issues. Most of the posts that I have read have said that the user can't see any major difference with the Unauthorized channel issues.

The main problem is with the CableCard firmware. That hasn't changed and won't change until later in mid 2012. The Firmware changes will be deployed at the same time that Comcast deploys the S26 guide.

I didn't see any problems with the S25 guide in Houston like the ones described in the linked thread. According to Ted, he and his team are working on the schedule for deploying S26 so I don't think that was the "official start" for deploying S26. He usually announces when an area will get a guide update. The last time frames have been mid 2012 and June.

The menu system can be changed without updating the guide. Maybe, there was a problem with that. In the last few weeks, Houston added season and episode information to the program description in the guide.

In iGuide, the menus are downloadable. That is why you sometimes get a 'please wait' and limited functionality for awhile after a reboot. You can even force a reload by changing the language.

The season/episode stuff was added to the iGuide data about 2 months ago to all users. It also started showing up on Motorola's, along with the loss of about a day's worth of programming due to it taking up more memory.

When the boxes are downloading the iGuide data, just how fast is the connection between the box and the headend it is getting the info from? I'm assuming it's a broadband connection, but is it at the same speed tier I'm paying for with Internet blast 30 or is it the extreme 105 tier?

If it's similar to the Motorola's, it uses what is called the OOB (Out-Of-Band) channel. It's typically either the 4MHz gap between RF4 and RF5, or an unused RF channel nearby. The datarate is rather slow. It's a low QAM or QPSK. That same channel is also used for:clockchannel map (every few minutes)near-term 6-8 hours data (probably every 20-30 minutes)long-term data (maybe once or twice a day now)menu downloadsfirmware updatesOnDemand menus (dynamic)OnDemand control (telling the box what frequency to tune to watch)Network control (iPads, etc...)

Use the following methods to determine when you wil get the new guide update.

quote:Hi Ted,

What I believe is frustrating to most of the Cisco/SA customers is the lack of a plan, communication and execution. I have been trying for over a year to find out what the plan is. If you tell us its 2014, then it is 2014. Its the lack of a plan and communication that is frustrating. How hard is it to put a plan together and publish?

quote:Hello Tom, my post below [Note: Link to a similar post »Re: New Guides for SA/Cisco Areas (Info from Ted Hodgins Blog) ] from May 1st outlines at a high level the plan that we have for our customers that have Scientific-Atlanta and Cisco branded cable boxes. We are scheduled to start delivering additional features and functionality over the summer of 2012.

Better communication is something that you will see as we get closer to delivering these new features in each area.

Typically notifications and announcements around products, channels and services are done via a combination of bill messages, e-mails, bill inserts, TV commercials, direct mail, box messages as well as this site [Note: continue to check Ted's blog].

Based off this information on the hardware capabilities, we are looking at about a 1.54Mbps data rate on that out-of-band channel which carries all the out of band data. This means that the guide data would only utilize a small portion of available speed.

rarely does this ever happen smoothly. Depending on which call center or web chat tech a customer gets, sometimes they have absolutely no idea the speed tiers Comcast offers. I've personally been told by techs that Comcast doesn't offer anything over 8Mbps or even 12Mbps for my area. When I politely inform them that I have Blast 30Mbps they say that is impossible and one even called me a dirty liar whom was later terminated. This becomes a problem when a customer is calling in about performance problems. It sounds like they have outdated information but they claim it is current until 2014. In contrast the North American call centers we have in Canada and the US are on the ball with their tech support stuff.

We are talking about the OOB data rate used by the cable boxes, not HSI. Although, most HD boxes do also have DOCSIS modems in them, but are usually not used. I think the Tivo-on-Motorola used it, and it may also be used whenever True2Way is rolled out.